This course, which straddles various sub-fields of the civil and commercial law of obligations and property, takes a broad look at interests in goods in English law – what forms such property rights take and how they are passed to another. Besides considering what (and in which circumstances) animate and inanimate things are recognised as ‘goods’, the first part of the course will focus on how possession, rights to possession and their protection by means of rules of tortious liability have moulded this area of private law, giving it a shape distinctively different from civilian systems driven by a more abstract ownership ‘motor’. Material in this part will take in bailment and questions of the proprietary effect of hire.
For the middle bulk of the course attention will then turn to the mechanisms by which interests in goods may be acquired. Besides sale of goods – the commercially and statistically most important pillar of this field of property law – material in this part of the course will include gifts, finding, and mixing.
Finally, the course will consider pledges of goods and other mechanisms by which possessory or proprietary security rights over goods may be created. |
